Defense Expenditure Quotes

According to the National Priorities Project, military expenditures are 54% of the budget. The next biggest line item is 7%. And there are a whole bunch of 7 percents. So in short, we have a military budget surrounded by a lot of footnotes. This is not serving us well.

Using these new funds, I will ask my secretary of defense to propose a new defense budget to meet the following longtime goals.

It will be sufficient to point to the enormous burdens which armaments place on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of a nation, as well as on its budget and taxes.

After September 11, it became unpatriotic to question any homeland-security or defense spending, and that let things get out of control.

So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.

Republicans drove us into debt with two wars and the Bush tax cuts. Now they want to pay for that debt with cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This is not only immoral it is bad economics. Why do Republicans always have money for war but not for those in need?

Their [the U.S.’s] defense budget in absolute figures is almost 25 times bigger than Russia’s. This is what in defense is referred to as ‘their home — their fortress.’ And good for them, I say. Well done!

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.

When the government is trying to penny-pinch and, at the same time, trying to keep a defense expenditure and so forth, which are regarded as quote unquote essential, the education is regarded inessential.

It is not widely known that, ever since the end of the Korean War, the United States has spent essentially the same amount of money on defense, in real terms, every single year.

A nation with a strong defence industry will not only be more secure. It will also reap rich economic benefits - it can boost investment, expand manufacturing, support enterprise, raise the technology level and increase economic growth in the country.

The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.

It is a fact that the US defence budget is larger than the defence budgets of all other countries taken together. This is why I understand the US President when he says that his NATO allies should take over part of this burden. It is a pragmatic and understandable approach.

I suspect that Donald Trump is going to be very tough with those countries that don't spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. He will ask them why should we allow a free-ride policy.

Europe - and in particular Germany - must assume more responsibility. We must be ready to take on this responsibility and that has consequences domestically. That means, for example, we must be ready to spend more money on defense at home and abroad.

America picks up 73 percent of the cost of NATO. We're paying to protect them. Wouldn't it be nice if people would pay, and we could do things properly? That's got to change.

To me pornography is...spending all your money and not educating the people in America, but spending it instead on weapons.

The marshalling of those resources in order to obtain the maximum war effort for Australia, and a maximum degree of help and cooperation for Great Britain and the sister Dominions, is the primary objective of the new Department.

England would be better off without Canada; it keeps her in a prepared state for war at a great expense and constant irritation.

Japan is the only country in the world that does not call its defense organizations a military. That is absurd, when the government is spending 5 trillion yen a year for self-defense.

In the Middle East, America has spent as of four weeks ago $6 trillion. Think of it. And, by the way, the Middle East is in what - I mean, it's not even close - it's in much worse shape than it was 15 years ago. If our Presidents would have gone to the beach for 15 years, we would be in much better shape than we are right now, that I can tell you.

Russia spends enormous, senseless amounts of money on the army and the police. We have one of the top rankings in the world when it comes to the number of police officers - but when it comes to the number of murders, we are also right at the top.

This is another area in which savings can also be moved from wasteful - like the F-35 weapons system that will cost us $1.5 trillion by the time it's done and it's obsolete, you know, it's a weapons system - as well as this global military infrastructure, which is unlike anything the world has ever known at any time.

We're spending on numerous countries - very substantial countries, you know the countries we're talking about - but we're defending them for a fraction of the cost.

Now, when North Korea rears its head, we send our ships, we send our planes, we get ready, we got our 28,000 soldiers on the border, that's a seriously dangerous border by the way, they've got their million and a half man army and we have 28,000 soldiers. But here we are, doing this, protecting, and I am saying to myself, we don't even get money; we don't get anything for doing this.